


We Are Borg

by Tarlan



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Hive Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: Seven is straddling two worlds - Borg and human.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 10, Tic Tac Woe (The Apocabingo Community), Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	We Are Borg

**Author's Note:**

> Written to cover a multitude of challenge prompts :)
> 
> **tic_tac_woe** (Apocalypse 2) prompt: Absorbed into hive mind  
>  **trope_bingo** R14 prompt: presumed dead  
>  **hc_bingo** R10 prompt: forced body modification (WILD CARD)  
>  **100fandoms** prompt 39: belong

Annika Hansen never experience a true childhood like other human children. She was barely three when her parents took her on **The Raven** to investigate the presence of an unknown species in deep space. It had been just the three of them on-board the science vessel they had made their home, far from the Federation. For three years her parents had tracked the Borg using advanced shielding technology developed by her father, eventually ending up in the Delta Quadrant after using a transwarp conduit to follow a Borg Cube. Although Annika had been bright for her age she could not understand the danger her parents had placed her into until the ship was damaged during an ion storm.

For 13.2 seconds the shield was down and the Borg detected them.

They tried to escape but the pursuit was relentless. Those 13.2 seconds had sealed their fate.

Seeing the partially assimilated remains of **The Raven** years later brought back memories. She recalled the wariness and the tension when one of her parents left the ship to enter a Borg cube undetected, and she had learned to go play alone at those times, leaving the remaining parent to concentrate on their work. She recalled the excitement and joy of them sharing their discoveries and relief afterwards, spending hours analyzing the data.

She remembered that final encounter, of the large dead-looking man covered in metal parts reaching for her as she tried to hide under the console. Her father had cried out her name in anguish, and her mother was screaming at her to run, to hide, but to no avail. There was nowhere safe to hide.

She never saw her parents again - as far as she was aware.

One moment they were on **The Raven** and the next she was someplace else - dark and forbidding. They took her along a corridor filled with tubes holding other children of all ages from different races - and she was assimilated. The maturation process increased her mental capabilities far beyond that of the bright child, with the neural pathways of her brain restructured in the chamber, and she emerged five years later as Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One.

Annika Hansen no longer existed.

She retained no sense of individuality. The Borg were all she knew. All she wanted to know.

She belonged to the Collective, was part of the hive mind, interfacing with every Borg simultaneously with no memory of her parents, of Magnus and Erin Hansen. She might have seen them, worked with them even, but they would have no memory of her and she had none of them.

After thirteen years fulfilling her duties as directed by the Borg hive mind, and the Queen who controlled the Collective, Seven of Nine had assimilated whole planets as well as individuals, linking their minds to the Collective to increase its knowledge and strength. Their individuality was absorbed into the hive mind too, stripped from them as they became drones like her but she had no concept of grief to mourn what they would see as a loss. She moved through the cube ship and the only voices were those inside her head giving her direction or answering her demands for information.

Then they detected **Voyager**.

Only once before had she found herself severed from the Collective. The Borg was all she knew and the emptiness inside her head at the time had been terrifying so she forcibly linked the three other Borg from her Unimatrix into a temporary collective to prevent them from remembering they had once been individuals. To stop them from leaving her alone. It had been easy for her as she had no recollection of being Annika Hansen, having been assimilated at such a young age. The temporary collective had sustained her until they were located and brought back into the Collective.

Now she was alone once more. 

Most of the implants had been removed from her body leaving behind only those that were beyond the technology of the Federation's Holographic doctor. Her chest hurt where bone was knitting back together, and the tight fitting silver jumpsuit compressed against her slowly regenerating skin. The doctor had managed to regenerate the visible skin of her face and hands much faster to help her assimilate into the Voyager Collective.

She did not belong in this Collective.

She could not hear them except with her human ears, with all sound muffled, limited to a narrower wavelength band of the human species. She could not see them except through her human eyes, though the ocular implant intensified some of the visual stimulation, increasing her range of the spectrum beyond that of a human but she still felt as if she was half-blind. She could not understand the range of emotions that made them so unpredictable, made them question orders, made them weak, and yet strong. Happiness, sadness, despair, elation, love, and hatred. None of these emotions had purpose or meaning to the Borg, but she was starting to feel emotion.

It was alien and she suppressed it.

From the Federation records, she and her parents had long been presumed dead but she could not retake the name of Annika. She was no longer the small child who had lived most of her short childhood alone, pretending to be a ballerina dancing to an empty audience in her red tutu and pink ballet slippers. She was Seven of Nine. She was Borg. She wanted to be part of a Collective, sharing her knowledge and experiences with her Collective.

She wanted to belong.

Years later, with the Delta Quadrant far behind, she was still Seven of Nine and still unable to release the final part of her Borg identification and become Annika Hansen. She was Borg and yet she had learned to become an individual with independent thought, with likes and dislikes, and even subject to the emotions that had seemed so unnecessary and unimportant. It made her question her actions years earlier, in forcing that temporary collective to bury the individuality of her Unimatrix after they were separated from the rest of the Collective. Then, she had not been torn between her need to belong and their need to be free. To be individuals. Now she was different like them, straddling two worlds.

She was Borg. She was human. 

And she was alone.

END  



End file.
